Retailer's discounts come at a price for communities near and far
By MARY JO MELONE
Published May 31, 2004
I swore I would not go again. I've never been a fan of Wal-Mart.
There's the endless, shadeless parking. The building with all the charm of a shoe box, a shoe box for a man with ugly, gargantuan feet. The motor oil and the baby clothes, the coffee pots and the garden hoses, the canned goods and the eggs, all mashed in together. The wailing children. Adults like me who feel like wailing. The constant beep of a score of bar code scanners as one item after another, at one register after another, is rung up.
And those yellow smiley faces that are supposed to let you know you are really getting a deal.
Having said that, I went to a Wal-Mart Supercenter on Dale Mabry Highway in Tampa over the weekend. I went because I am on a money-saving kick.
Shopping at Wal-Mart can be such a disorienting experience that I have no idea if I saved money. I am considering this a fact-finding mission. For this Wal-Mart Supercenter is supposed to be a new and improved Wal-Mart breed, half as big as these monsters usually are.
It's hard to believe that a corporation known for hiring illegal aliens, keeping out unions and driving under hometown businesses cares at all what we think. But as much as we shop at Wal-Mart stores, we're not crazy about them. The company's most successful supercenter is in Pinellas Park. The rest of Tampa Bay is carpeted with Wal-Marts, supercenters, and their cousins, Sam's Clubs. Still, we rebel.
Last year, the Pinellas County Commission rejected plans for a Palm Harbor store. Residents in the Derby Lane and Tyrone areas are upset about the possible arrival of stores. People in Holiday thumbed noses at plans for another, and residents of Beacon Woods are in full tilt against the company now.
In answer to the profound question of just how many Wal-Marts does one county need, the Manatee County Commission rejected plans for a fifth store there. Just last week, two suits were filed to stop annexation by the city of Crystal River of land that might eventually include a Wal-Mart.
One of the suits was brought by a small group of Citrus County property owners, led by an optometrist, Dr. Tom Dawson. He worries about the traffic and sprawl, the possible damage to wetlands and his community's small-town feel.
"Why do they insist on forcing themselves even though people don't want them?" Dawson asked me last week.
Oh, what a question. Since the Pinellas commission rejected that store for Palm Harbor last year, Wal-Mart has been trying to put one in adjacent Tarpon Springs. And the company sued after the Manatee project was rejected.
They really don't know when to quit. I doubt fundamentally that they care what communities want for themselves. Business is business, even if it wrecks the landscape.
When they can't stop Wal-Mart, bay area governments are trying their best to influence the final product. Citrus and Hernando counties have laws meant to force Wal-Mart and its architectural copy cats - places like Home Depot, Lowe's, Kmart and Target - to look less like warehouses and be more welcoming. Pasco may adopt a similar ordinance.
Tampa Bay really is a textbook case of the damage Wal-Mart can inflict. That's why people and politicians have begun to fight.
We're not alone. I've never thought our largely paved-over paradise would have much in common with the hills and valleys of a place like Vermont, but thanks to Wal-Mart we do now.
Last week, the National Trust for Historic Preservation put the entire state on its list of endangered places. The trust blames Wal-Mart. The company has four stores in Vermont and plans seven of those big supercenters. The trust thinks they will destroy the quaint rural character of Vermont and its small towns. Wal-Mart, ever the good corporate citizen, dismissed the criticism as farfetched. What else would you expect?
I don't know if I can bear to continue my cost-cutting experiment. It isn't just the beep-beep-beep at checkout still in my head. Wal-Mart promises everything at a discount. But why do I end up thinking my community is short-changed?
